


They say the people we love, we leave behind

by sewmyname



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Break Up, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 14:19:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sewmyname/pseuds/sewmyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And I fall into bed every night alone and I stalk you online and I wonder what you’re doing, and where you are, and what you had for dinner and what you watched on telly and who you went out with. And most of all, whether you’re lying alone in bed as well. And I pray to every god I can think of that you are, and I’m absolutely fucking terrified that you’re not.”</p>
<p>Nick breaks up with Harry before the Take Me Home tour begins, breaking his own heart into pieces in the process. Harry calls him the night before the band leave for Europe, and it's clear Nick's not the only one who's been losing his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They say the people we love, we leave behind

_Harry stops at the doorway, spinning around angrily to face Nick. “Were you ever even in love with me? Were you? Or was this all just some bullshit PR exercise for you? Get papped with Harry Styles for a year or so, climb up the social ladder a bit, dump him when you reckon you’ve done well enough out of it.”_

_Nick steps forward, his eyes glistening with anger, his fists clenched in frustration. “How can you even fucking say that? You know I fucking loved you. Love you, still. I’m not doing this because I don’t fucking love you.”_

_Harry shrugs and shakes his head, steps backwards into the hall, his eyes suddenly dead. “Well you just mustn’t love me enough then, hey.”_

_He turns and walks away, and Nick’s face falls into his hands as he stands alone in his doorway. The tears start to flow freely as he slowly closes the door._

_*             *             *_

Eight weeks later, Nick’s poking suspiciously at a week old curry he’s just unearthed from the fridge when he hears the sound of his phone vibrating. Why is the fucking thing on silent? He presumes it’s Aimee or Pix to sort out their drinks plans for tonight, so when he finally manages to locate the source of the sound under a pile of clean washing on the table and sees Harry’s face on the screen he almost drops it in shock.

It’s been almost two months since he and Harry have spoken, since Nick ended it one hideous night in February. After weeks of tortuous debate – with himself – he had decided it was all just too much, this thing between them, and that it was only going to get worse; that it was going to be absolutely fucking unbearable for both of them when Harry went on tour. He had told Harry as much, watched Harry start to cry silently as he balled himself into the corner of the couch and begged Nick to change his mind. Nick had never experienced anything like it, watching himself crush the heart of the boy he loved more than he’d ever loved a single bloody thing in this world. Of course, he’d never experienced anything like Harry at all, he’d never even fallen in love before, but this – this was a level of pain he wasn’t aware it was possible to endure.

But he’d been determined, absolutely determined, to go through with it. He simply had to. How could anyone in good conscience keep Harry fucking Styles on a leash while he went on a nine month international tour? How could anyone think that was reasonable, let alone doable? Harry was a nineteen year old superstar, at the top of his game, discovering the world for the first time. Half the globe wanted to go to bed with him, and here he is stuck to some ageing, increasingly wrinkled DJ he’s somehow befriended and against all odds become involved with. Nick couldn’t have done it to him, couldn’t possibly have tried to keep him to himself for all those months away, couldn’t possibly have been that selfish. He had to let him go, and so he did. He broke his own heart into tiny, shattered pieces in the process.

And now they’ve had eight weeks of no contact, not a single thing, if you don’t count the dozen or so texts a day that Nick composes and then deletes without sending, which presumably you don’t.  From what Nick’s been able to glean from his obsessive stalking of Twitter and tumblr, Harry’s been out every bloody night since, getting drunk with half the UK after every concert. And now he’s calling him, the night before the band leaves for Europe, out of the fucking blue.

Nick squeezes his eyes shut, swears loudly, and manages to answer.

“Harold,” he says, his voice catching slightly on the first syllable. Bugger it.        

There’s a brief pause. “Nick,” says Harry, his voice impossibly perfect and deeply familiar, as ever. “You alright?”

Nick almost laughs at the absurdity of the question, catches himself in time. Best to lie. “Yeah, yeah. I’m good. You? You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m well, I’m well. Thanks. You’re… you’re good. That’s good.”

“Yeah.” Fuck, thinks Nick. This could go on all day. “I’m good.”

Harry takes a deep breath. “Just… just wanted to call you before we leave the UK. Just… wanted to make sure I didn’t get drunk later tonight and call you to say anything stupid. You know.”

Nick nods, abruptly realising that he’s been pacing the kitchen clinging to the curry container since the beginning of the phone call. He forces himself to come to a stop at the sink and put the fucking curry down.

“Right, right. So.” He pulls slightly madly at the ends of his hair. “What kind of stupid thing would you be worried about saying then?”

Harry swallows audibly. “Nothing too exciting,” he says quietly, the words coming even slower than usual. “Just… you know, the usual.”

Nick goes back to poking at the curry in an effort to distract himself from what could plausibly become a full blown panic attack. “Yeah?” he asks, aiming for nonchalance and failing. “The usual?”

Harry starts again, and his voice is low and intense, as though he’s forcing himself to speak. “Yeah, you know. Just… just how I… just how I love you. And miss you. How much I fucking miss you. And how every day drives me fucking mental, and every hour I want to call you and tell you that your fucking ‘mature decision’ has pretty much ruined my entire fucking life.” He’s got momentum up now, and the words start to rush out in an angry flow. “That there is no one, literally not a single fucking person, in the whole world, who I want to be with right now, apart from you. That the fact that you’ve decided, unilaterally, that we’re over, breaks my heart into seventeen thousand pieces every time I think about it. That you are the only thing I think about, 23 and a half hours a day, and that I am doing everything within my power to distract myself from that, and nothing is working. Nothing. I’m going out every night and I’m talking to randoms for hours and I’m looking, everywhere I’m looking for someone who can make me feel a tenth of what you make me feel, and there’s no one who comes even close. And I’ve realised there’s not going to be. And I fall into bed every night alone and I stalk you online and I wonder what you’re doing, and where you are, and what you had for dinner and what you watched on telly and who you went out with. And most of all, whether you’re lying alone in bed as well. And I pray to every god I can think of that you are, and I’m absolutely fucking terrified that you’re not.”

By the end of this small speech Nick is gripping the edge of the sink, staring into the bottom of his favourite cup. Fuck, fuck, fuckiest fucking fuck.

He’s not sure he can actually handle this. He’s been a wreck, what could only be described as a complete and utter emotional wreck, for two months now. The only thing that’s given him any form of sanity at all – other than the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol and a ridiculous quantity of partying – is the certainty that he made the right decision. That old cliché: if you love someone, let them go. He knew that he’d done that, knew that he’d made the ultimate unselfish sacrifice. That he’d been the bigger man, to make that call. That Harry was probably revelling in his newfound freedom. That he could probably barely recall Nick’s face by this point. That Harry had never loved him, not really. How could he have? It had just been an infatuation, a teenage crush that he’d be over in no time, surely already was. He’d repeated this mantra to himself over and over and over again, to the point where he’d almost come to believe it.

After the last unbearable month, to hear Harry lay everything on the line like this is almost unbelievable. He wonders fleetingly whether he could actually be dreaming.

Just when he realises he’s been silent for far more seconds than would be deemed normal, Harry’s voice comes across the line again, anxiously rambling now. “Are you there? Have I just totally freaked you out? Have you got some hot model in your bed as we speak? Do you even remember what I look like? Kinda an average face, you might recall…”

Nick forces his extremely uncooperative mouth to make words, his fingers now massaging the edge of the sink like a large stainless steel stress ball. “Harry. Harold. Harry. Shut up. I do not have a fucking model here. I… I remember what you fucking look like. It’s perfection crossed with amazing, if I remember correctly.”

He hears Harry laugh, and the sound practically cuts him in half. Harry’s voice sounds slightly more relaxed when he responds. “Oh really? Haven’t heard you describe me like that before.”

Nick smiles, despite himself. “Well. That’s pretty much what you look like.”

Harry’s silent for a few moments, and when he speaks his voice has darkened again, scared and uncertain even as he attempts a joke. “So… apart from still apparently being a fan of my stunning good looks…”

The question hangs in the air for a beat, two. Fuck it, thinks Nick. I can’t keep up this shit.

He takes a deep breath and commits himself to some truth for once.

“Well. I’m glad you called. So that you didn’t say anything stupid. Because I probably would’ve done the same, if you’d done it. I would’ve said something absolutely fucking moronic.”

He hears the slight smile in Harry’s voice as he replies. “Yeah? Along the lines of…”

Nick starts to smile again, his grip on the sink loosening. “Oh, you know. Just something ridiculous. Like… like the fact that I love you too, and I miss you so much I literally don’t know what to do with myself on a day to day basis. Like the fact that there’s a strong possibility that I’m losing my fucking mind, and every day takes me a little closer to the officially certifiable stage. That I creep around on tumblr like a thirteen year old girl and I’ve literally set up my phone to give me notifications every time you fucking tweet. That I am most definitely alone in my bed every night, and that I am similarly terrified that there’s someone else in yours, making you happier than I ever could. That I’ve convinced myself that you’ve probably been wondering what the fuck you ever saw in me, and that you probably wish you’d never met me at all. I might have even said that after two months of total fucking insanity, the idea of another seven seems absolutely incomprehensible. Really, I could have said all sorts of things. It wouldn’t have been pretty.”

There’s silence for so long it seems the phone must have disconnected, and then Nick hears Harry take a deep breath, shift the phone slightly. Nick squeezes his eyes shut again and turns around, sinking down to the floor with his back against the cupboard below the sink.

Harry speaks again, and much to Nick’s relief, his tone has changed completely. He’s still sounding intense, but there’s a joy there, as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. “Nick. What we have here is a situation.”

Nick allows himself a small laugh, opening his eyes again. “Oh yeah?” he asks. “You think?”

“Yeah.” Harry pauses, and Nick hears him laugh again. “We have a situation, as far as I can see, where both of us have spent the last month stalking the other via every form of social media possible, where both of us miss the other to the point of certifiable insanity, where both of us are utterly fucking miserable, and most importantly…” he draws in a breath, lets it out gradually. “Where both of us are still madly fucking in love with each other.”

Nick is grinning now, ear to ear. He leans back against the bench, looks upward to the ceiling, runs his left hand through his hair. “That does seem like a fairly accurate summary, Harold.”

 “I’m glad you think so.”

There’s silence for a few moments. Nick’s almost certain that he can _hear_ Harry smiling.

“Well,” Harry whispers conspiratorially, “If you’re up for it, I have a proposal.”

“Mmm?”

“What you’re going to do is remove your head from your own arse, wake up to the fact that I love you desperately and want nothing more than to be with you, and let me come over tonight and make this very, very clear to you. Then, I’m going to go off on the rest of this tour tomorrow morning, and we are going to text, call and Skype several times a day. I’m not so much as going to glance at another human for seven months, and when I get back we are going to be stronger than ever, because if we can get through this then we can get through fucking anything.”

Nick is now genuinely fearful that he could pull a muscle in his face at any moment from the sheer strength of his smile. “Fuck, Harry. Are you serious? Do you actually think we can do it?”

Harry laughs again, the fondness in his voice making Nick’s already fragile insides dissolve entirely. “Nicholas Grimshaw, you are being an impossible idiot. Of course we fucking can.”


End file.
